International Rugby Board lawyers scuppered a plan to use "injury passports" to monitor at-risk players for concussion more than two years ago.

A week after championship-winning former Chiefs captain Craig Clarke was forced to take an indefinite break from rugby after reportedly suffering his 10th concussion in less than two years, The Breakdown can reveal the IRB was thwarted in an attempt to develop a global player database that would document and transfer information on players with a legacy of head injuries.

A similar program has been up and running in New Zealand for a decade, allowing Super Rugby clubs and provinces to record and share key health indicators and test results from all registered players. The Australian Rugby Union also maintains a similar database.

But when IRB chief medical officer Martin Raftery floated an international application of the concept in 2011, he was told by the governing body's lawyers that privacy concerns would make it impossible to pull off.

The IRB continued work on developing its pitch-side concussion assessment (PSCA) tool but shelved plans to share key medical data between provinces and national unions.

"At the beginning of the pitch-side concussion assessment one of the ideas was that a system like this would allow us to document and transfer certain information on people who have had head injuries," Raftery said.

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"It would function as a passport of injuries . . . It was something we would like to do but we can't do because of privacy laws."

The revelations come as Chiefs coach Dave Rennie rejected any suggestion Clarke's former province had been reckless or negligent in dealing with the second-rower's health.

Clarke left the Chiefs last year after co-captaining the club to its second consecutive Super Rugby title, joining Irish province Connacht in the northern hemisphere autumn on a three-year deal.

He was named captain at the start of his first season in the European Pro12 competition but was sidelined indefinitely last week after his second concussion since starting with the club.

Connacht coach Pat Lam, who coached the Auckland Blues for four years, told Irish website TheScore.ie that the other eight incidents happened while Clarke was playing for the Chiefs.

Rennie disputed Lam's comments, telling The Breakdown the club had recorded only three serious incidents of concussion.

If a player suffers 10 concussions inside two years then the rest of the players need to be looking straight at the doctors involved for an explanation.

"Craig had five or six weeks off after the last one . . . We've got strict protocols around how we handle concussion and we take it very seriously," Rennie said.

"For someone to say that he hasn't been looked after is miles from the truth and a bit ridiculous."

Former Wallabies captain Rocky Elsom, who has been outspoken on the issue of concussion, slammed the handling of Clarke's case.

"If we don't hear from this doctor about why this was allowed to happen then we're missing an important part of being adequately be able to treat brain trauma," Elsom said.

"[The player] needs to take some responsibility but the doctor has more and needs to manage that.

"The player is not able to test himself and decipher results and compare them to previous results.

"He is not the person to weigh that stuff up, he is more or less at the mercy of the people managing him and they need to be accountable.

"If a player suffers 10 concussions inside two years then the rest of the players need to be looking straight at the doctors involved for an explanation."

Elsom did not endorse the "injury passport" concept, which could conceivably interfere with a player's capacity to secure a contract.

"Players are under-educated in this area and should not be required to take primary responsibility for managing their own medical history," Elsom said.

"The number of things that go wrong on a week-to-week basis for players, they have to just go on and keep playing.

"There is no way they are in the right frame of mind to be able to make that judgment for themselves. That's why teams have doctors."

The IRB comes under constant scrutiny – and heavy fire – for its handling of concussion in the global game.

Raftery said he believed the "injury passport" concept would be a valuable tool at a time in the game when professional players move around the world more and more.

"We can't mandate or tell a union how to manage their players because we don't own them, [the unions] do," Raftery said.

"Having said that, the answer is to educate players, coaches, referees and the public of the risks of concussion so people are more likely to come forward at an earlier point in time, not after their 10th concussion."